[theshackleford]

> When interacting with LLMs it feels a lot more like I'm just receiving knowledge passively and I don't think it gets integrated as well.

This sounds like it's more down to how the individual uses the tool. I am not someone who has even been particularly good at reading > learning the thing. I've only ever been capable of learning by doing and with capability to interrogate on the points I don't get. LLMs allow that in a way that is just not feasible with any human being whose tolerance of me would diminish rapidly.

In most cases, I will be writing down my understanding as I would in isolation from a primary source, building flash cards and actively practicing what I have learned, only with more capability to interrogate on the points I have difficulty understanding or need clarity on. Effectively, I am doing the following in a capacity I personally never had via any other means:

> I seem to be doing a lot of integrating and reorganizing my thoughts.

If you are using it as a slot machine of knowledge, and going from receiving > doing with no intermediate step I see how outcomes could differ.

[tclancy]

Seconded. At a minimum, you can literally tell the agent to guide you but not point you and only help when you are stuck if you're actively trying to learn something. It's been a help for me to bridge a couple of gaps I'd struggled to cross before (mainly hardware things).

[Forgeties79]

> This sounds like it's more down to how the individual uses the tool.

I genuinely agree with a lot of your comment but lines like this drive me crazy. Anytime somebody has a critique of AI, so many people hand wave away with “well you’re doing it wrong.” If we can just chalk up every negative thing with AI to “incorrect tool usage” then we’ll never honestly assess it.

[theshackleford]

I didn’t say they were using AI “wrong.” That’s a stronger claim than the one I made.

Their assessment was:

> When interacting with LLMs it feels a lot more like I'm just receiving knowledge passively and I don't think it gets integrated as well.

My point is that the passivity is not necessarily an inherent property of the tool. It depends heavily on an individual chooses to engage with the output.

Saying LLMs make learning passive is a bit like someone else saying books make learning passive because you can skim them without thinking. When we all know instead of reading a book passively you could in addition annotate it, question its claims, summarise it, test yourself, and ultimately apply what you learned. The medium permits both. The same is true of the output of an LLM. You'll get out what you put in and nothing more.

You can use it like a slot machine, repeatedly pulling the lever for another answer without reflecting on any of them. But the fact that a tool permits shallow engagement does not mean shallow engagement is the only option available to you.

That also doesn’t mean every criticism of AI should be dismissed as “incorrect tool usage.” AI has real limitations and deserves serious criticism, and I assure you, I am not popular with the AI hype bros for this reason. However we still need to distinguish between limitations of the tool and consequences of how someone uses it. Not every potentially negative experience is rooted entirely in the technology itself. Sometimes user behaviour is a significant part of the cause.